keivan serrano | Horse Racing Free Tips

Continent’s Winningest Thoroughbred Beats Quarter Horses

Six Ninety One (Congrats), currently North America's winningest Thoroughbred with nine victories in 2021, won an 870-yard Quarter Horse race by a nose Tuesday at Arizona Downs.

“The victory doesn't count toward the 9-year-old gelding's lead as the winningest Thoroughbred, though. Equibase separately ranks Quarter Horse races in their own category.

But Six Ninety One still has a two-win cushion over four other Thoroughbreds tied with seven victories apiece.

Either way, 10 total mixed-meet victories through nearly seven months of racing is a pretty noteworthy achievement.

In all of 2020, four horses tied with eight victories apiece to lead the continent. In 2019, seven horses shared the year-end honor with nine wins. Over the last decade, the number of most annual victories has ranged between eight and 12.

Six Ninety One's July 20 score came in an $8,000 allowance dash under jockey Keivan Serrano as the 7-5 favorite. Trainer Alfredo Asprino owns the gelding in partnership with Jesus Vielma. His winning time of :44.97 was just one-hundredth of a second faster than the runner-up.

Six Ninety One was bred in Kentucky by Edwin and Melissa Anthony. He sold for $75,000 at KEESEP in 2013, then hammered for $59,000 at OBSOPN eight months later.

A speed specialist in abbreviated sprints, Six Ninety One previously won two other races against Quarter Horses in 870-yard dashes during the 2019 season.

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Serrano’s Drug Test Raises Questions About How Racing Will Deal With Medical Marijuana Cards

The legalization of medical marijuana has been spreading across the United States for the past several years, and on July 27, stewards at Mountaineer Park faced a decision that racing jurisdictions around the country will likely see more of in the near future.

Jockey Keivan Serrano underwent a random drug test on July 26, and was found to have THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, in his system. (THC is the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana.)

Serrano possesses a medical marijuana card, though it was obtained in Ohio. Mountaineer is located in New Cumberland, W.V. and Ohio's medical marijuana office does not have any reciprocity agreements with other states.

West Virginia passed a medical cannabis bill three years ago when Senate Bill 386 was signed into law on Apr. 19, 2017. The bill's language set a goal of having infrastructure such as dispensaries, medical marijuana cards, etc., in place within two years, but it still hasn't happened.

“Medical marijuana is legal in West Virginia,” said West Virginia attorney Harley Wagner. “The legislation has been passed, it's just that the components to it actually coming to fruition aren't in place yet.”

Until then, any individual caught with marijuana in their possession in West Virginia is still able to be cited by police. Wagner explained that for a small amount of marijuana, the case could be taken to court and the citation could be expunged after six months if the person does not accrue any similar citations.

Serrano did not have any marijuana in his possession when he was tested by the stewards at Mountaineer. At the time of his testing — after the races on July 26 — Serrano said he was straightforward with the testing agent about his medical marijuana card, and included the information on the official testing report.

Serrano said stewards called him the following morning to tell him he'd tested positive for THC, as he'd expected. They asked about Serrano's card, and why he had the prescription.

“I use it to sleep at night,” Serrano said. “We race at night, and sometimes I don't get home until 11:30 at night, then I'd have to get up again at five the next morning. So it helps me sleep.”

Serrano said the stewards asked him to send them the documentation he had in his possession, because West Virginia racing rules indicate that a licensee testing positive for a prescription drug is not subject to penalties, under rule 178-1-24.3.v. He also said that the stewards told him this was their first time dealing with a medical marijuana card held by a licensee.

It was Serrano's second positive test for THC in 2020 — he also tested positive at Fonner Park in Nebraska back in March.

Serrano found out via the ARCI website on July 29 that he had been summarily suspended by the stewards, pending a hearing scheduled for Aug. 5.

According to Joe Moore, executive director of the West Virginia Racing Commission, Serrano was suspended because he “did not produce a document which identified the amount or dosage of medical marijuana that was permissible for him to ingest in appropriate and specified intervals, nor did he produce a document that would have allowed the Stewards to determine whether the amount of THC in his system was consistent with a prescribed dosage.”

The level of THC in Serrano's system at the time of the test was not made public in the official ruling.

Serrano made waves on social media after the suspension became public, announcing he was leaving the sport of horse racing, but the 22-year-old said his retirement from the saddle had been on the horizon for a while.

“I've always struggled with my weight, and I always told myself that if I ever got scared or if I got too heavy, that I would stop,” Serrano said. “I don't want to not give owners and trainers 100 percent, because that's something I pride myself on.”

Serrano plans to return to school in Puerto Rico. He'll attend pre-med classes online beginning in August with the goal of one day becoming a neurosurgeon.

“I had a good run,” said Serrano, who retires with 105 wins from 1,129 starts. “I don't have any regrets.”

In the meantime, the West Virginia racing commission has not officially made a determination regarding the use of medical marijuana in licensees, including jockeys.

“The West Virginia Racing Commission has not addressed medical marijuana in its rules inasmuch as the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (WVDHHR), the state agency responsible for administering West Virginia's medical marijuana program, has not implemented the program and rules in West Virginia,” Moore explained. “It remains to be seen how the state of West Virginia will address the recognition of other state programs and other state medical marijuana authorization cards. Until such time as the Racing Commission has more direction and guidance from the WVDHHR, it is premature to make amendments to the rules of racing.”

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‘It Was A Ride, All Right’: Serrano Gets Himself Out Of Sticky Spot In Mountaineer Ride

Keivan Serrano is not someone who panics when he finds himself in a tight spot.

“One thing I learned is not to panic, because panic can make it a lot worse,” said the young jockey. “I go out there and there's no fear. The day that I'm scared to do what I do, is the day I need to stop.”

That's why, when he saw Side Tracked drift to the right out of the Number One gate in Sunday's third race at Mountaineer, he began weighing his options. At first, Serrano thought he could steer his colt, a maiden named Bungalow Flash, to the right to avoid the domino effect. Then he saw Just Doing to his outside, wandering toward him, and found himself squeezed between two horses and forced out of the tack.

“I thought I was going to fall,” he said. “To be completely hoenst with you, this is one of my main stables and I knew we had a really good shot to win the race. I was going to do everything I could to stay on this horse. The only thing I felt behind me was the eight horse, so I just sort of pushed off him and pushed back in[to the saddle].

“It was a ride, all right.”

Serrano said he was able to work his feet back into the stirrups while remaining mindful of the colt's mouth, not wanting to balance against the reins and check the horse.

In the end, his patience paid off – Serrano finished third, just a nose behind runner-up Juliano.

“I came into the race with all the confidence in the world in this horse,” he said. “Up until we did finish the race, I thought I was going to get the second.”

It isn't the first time he's used this move of pushing off a rival to pop himself back in the tack – just last year, he found himself in a similar position out of the gate in a turf race at Mountaineer and got himself righted again.

Cheating gravity is all in a day's work for Serrano, 22, who said he's living out a longtime dream of becoming a professional jockey. Growing up in Puerto Rico, Serrano said he always had horses and had hoped to go through the island's popular Escuela Vocacional Hípica, but found he ultimately didn't qualify. He moved to New York at the age of 18 and wandered the backstretch looking for someone to give him a job as an exercise rider. He had never galloped a horse before, but didn't mention that.

“I had never touched a racehorse in my life,” he said. “I went around telling people, 'Yeah, I'm an exercise rider.' I'd ridden horses before, just not racehorses. I'm 18, I'm thinking it's the same thing. I remember getting on horses and the first one I got on was a tank – big, tall. I had never been that high off the ground. Of course, it ran off with me. I didn't know what I was doing.”

That was in September 2016. Serrano later went to Ocala, as many aspiring jockeys do, to sharpen his skills with young horses just learning themselves. He got his license and began riding in March 2017.

Serrano said he learned to ride Thoroughbreds by feel. Horses were not a foreign language to him. As a kid, he studied jockeys on television and picked up a $100 horse to practice riding, honing his position as best he could from what he saw. By the time he got to New York, his sense of balance was well-developed, as was his sense of horsemanship.

Serrano said he still maintains contact with one particular four-legged teacher back home in Puerto Rico – a filly out of a mare he rescued when she was pregnant. The mare foaled uneventfully, but not long after that, things started to get complicated.

“At about two and a half months old, the mare started rejecting the foal and I had no idea why,” he said. “I finally pulled her away and started bottle feeding her until she could nibble on grass, on grain. She'd follow me around my hometown like a puppy. I could take her to the beach and run around, she'd jump in the water with me. That was pretty cool.

“Before I left Puerto Rico, I had five horses. I sold them all except her. I donated her to this place in San Juan where they could use her as a therapy horse for kids with special needs. I thought that was something she could fit perfectly in. I get updates on her — she's three now and she does her job very well.”

These days, Serrano can be found predominantly at Mountaineer, where his unconventional route to the saddle is paying off — he's the meet leader by earnings.

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